The Cost Codes window provides you with the ability to prepare, adjust and manage the final budget for the various Cost Codes within your project.
The Cost Codes window allows you to
- Create, manage and remove Cost Codes
- Add a budgeted value to each of the Cost Codes available
- Group a collection of Cost Codes together
The grid area shows a breakdown of the Resource Type values allocated to each Cost Code as well as their Rate and Total.
Cost Codes
Cost Codes are primarily used to classify, group, and report on, the costs for different areas of the project.
Codes can be added to the window by:
- Manually adding Codes via the Context menu, the Edit menu, or the toolbar
- Using the keyboard shortcut, F3
- Imported from an Expert Estimation project
- Imported from an external application, such as Microsoft Excel, using the Paste Special window
Note: Each Cost Code can be up to 255 alphanumeric characters in length.
Summary Cost Codes
Summary Cost Codes are used for the summation and analysis of a group of related Codes based on the Cost Code names. Summary Cost Codes are created in the same manner as normal Cost Codes but with the addition of wildcards in the name to filter the codes to summarise.
There are two types of wildcards you can use when creating Summary Cost Codes:
| Wildcard | Description |
|---|---|
| ? (Question Mark) | Used to summarise codes with any letter/number in the position of the question mark.
Example: 10?0 will summarise all 4 character codes that start with ’10’ as the first and second characters and end with ‘0’ character, such as 1020 or 10A0 |
| * (Asterisk) | Used to summarise codes with any combination of letters/numbers until the next entered character.
Example: A* will summarise all Cost Codes that start with ‘A’ no matter how long the code is, such as A100, A.300.1. |
Summary Cost Codes are created by
- Selecting New Cost Code from the Edit menu in the Cost Codes window.
- Typing in the name for the Summary Cost Code (ensuring that a Wildcard is used in the name).
- Click Save to add the Summary Cost Code to the project.
Note: You cannot enter a value for a Summary Cost Code as the value is automatically calculated based on the value of the Cost Codes being summarised.